Young Peoples Pride | Page 6

well--that's all I wanted to know."
"Oh don't look so much like a little tin Talleyrand, Ollie! I'm not
sure--and that's rather more than I'd even hint to anybody else."
"Thanks, little darling." But Ted has been stung too suddenly, even by
Oliver's light touch on something which he thought was a complete and
mortuary secret, to be in a mood for sarcasm.
"Oh, well, you might as well know. I suppose you do."
"All I know is that you seem to have been visiting--Peter--a good deal
this summer."
"Well, it started with Peter."
"It does so often."

"Oh Lord, now I've got to tell you. Not that there's
anything--definite--to tell." He pauses, looking at his hands.
"Well, I've just been telling you how I feel--sometimes. And other
times--being with Elinor--she's been so--kind. But I don't know, Ollie,
honestly I don't, and that's that."
"You see," he begins again, "the other thing--Oh, Lord, it's so tangled
up! But it's just this. It sounds--funny--probably--coming from me--and
after France and all that--but I'm not going to--pretend to myself I'm in
love with a girl--just because I may--want to get married--the way lots
of people do. I can't. And I couldn't with a girl like Elinor
anyway--she's too fine."
"She is rather fine," says Oliver appreciatively. "Selective reticence--all
that."
"Well, don't you see? And a couple of times--I've been nearly sure. And
then something comes and I'm not again--not the way I want to be. And
then--Oh, if I were, it wouldn't be much--use--you know--"
"Why not?"
"Well, consider our relative positions--"
"Consider your grandmother's cat! She's a girl--you're a man. She's a
lady--you're certainly a gentleman--though that sounds like Jane Austen.
And--"
"And she's--well, she isn't the wealthiest young lady in the country, but
the Pipers are rich, though they never go and splurge around about it.
And I'm living on scholarships and borrowed money from the
family--and even after I really start working I probably won't make
enough to live on for two or three years at least. And you can't ask a
girl like that--"
"Oh, Ted, this is the twentieth century! I'm not telling you to hang up
your hat and live on your wife's private income--" "That's fortunate,"
from Ted, rather stubbornly and with a set jaw.
"But there's no reason on earth--if you both really loved each other and
wanted to get married--why you couldn't let her pay her share for the
first few years. You know darn well you're going to make money
sometime--"
"Well--yes."
"Well, then. And Elinor's sporting. She isn't the kind that needs six
butlers to live--she doesn't live that way now. That's just pride, Ted,

thinking that--and a rather bum variety of pride when you come down
to it. I hate these people who moan around and won't be happy unless
they can do everything themselves--they're generally the kind that give
their wives a charge account at Lucile's and ten dollars a year pocket
money and go into blue fits whenever poor spouse runs fifty cents over
her allowance."
Ted pauses, considering. Finally,
"No, Ollie--I don't think I'm quite that kind of a fool. And almost thou
convincest me--and all that. But--well--that isn't the chief difficulty,
after all."
"Well, what _is_?" from Oliver, annoyedly.
Ted hesitates, speaking slowly.
"Well--after the fact that I'm not sure--France," he says at last, and his
mouth shuts after the word as if it never wanted to open again.
Oliver spreads both hands out hopelessly.
"Are you never going to get over that, you ass?"
"You didn't do the things I did," from Ted, rather difficultly. "If you
had--"
"If I had I'd have been as sorry as you are, probably, that I'd knocked
over the apple cart occasionally. But I wouldn't spend the rest of my
life worrying about it and thinking I wasn't fit to go into decent society
because of what happened to most of the A.E.F. Why you sound as if
you'd committed the unpardonable sin. And it's nonsense."
"Well--thinking of Elinor--I'm not too darn sure I didn't," from Ted,
dejectedly.
"That comes of being born in New England and that's all there is to it.
Anyhow, it's over now, isn't it?"
"Not exactly--it comes back."
"Well, kick it every time it does."
"But you don't understand. That and--people like Elinor--" says Ted
hopelessly.
"I do understand."
"You don't." And this time Ted's face has the look of a burned man.
"Well--" says Oliver, frankly puzzled. "Well, that's it. Oh, it doesn't
matter. But if there was another war--"
"Oh, leave us poor people that are trying to write a couple of years
before you dump us into heroes' graves by the Yang tse Kiang!"

"Another war--and bang! into the aviation." Ted muses, his face gone
thin with tensity. "It could last as long as it